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These firms create innovative solutions while upholding their responsibility to the public’s health, safety, and wellbeing.
EPA will host two virtual half-day sessions on Tuesday, January 26, and Thursday, January 28, 2021, to explore recent air emissions measurement and monitoring developments from municipal solid waste (MSW) landfills.
The sessions are designed to provide an opportunity to share and learn more about surface emissions monitoring and measuring technologies. This virtual workshop is open to the public, with the primary audience including MSW landfill owners/operators, federal and state regulatory agencies, and environmental consultants.
If you have any questions, please contact Shannon Banner at or John Evans at .
Session II – Thursday January 28, 2021; 1:00 to 4:30 PM (EDT)
The final rule applies to both major and area sources and contains the same requirements as the Emission Guidelines and New Source Performance Standards (EG/NSPS), promulgated in 1996. The final rule adds startup, shutdown, and malfunction (SSM) requirements, adds operating condition deviations for out-of-bounds monitoring parameters, requires timely control of bioreactor landfills, and changes the reporting frequency for one type of report.
The hazardous air pollutants (HAP) emitted by municipal solid waste (MSW) landfills include, but are not limited to, vinyl chloride, ethyl benzene, toluene, and benzene. Each of the HAP emitted from MSW landfills can cause adverse health effects provided sufficient exposure.
EPA will host two virtual half-day sessions on Tuesday, January 26, and Thursday, January 28, 2021, to explore recent air emissions measurement and monitoring developments from municipal solid waste (MSW) landfills.
The sessions are designed to provide an opportunity to share and learn more about surface emissions monitoring and measuring technologies. This virtual workshop is open to the public, with the primary audience including MSW landfill owners/operators, federal and state regulatory agencies, and environmental consultants.
If you have any questions, please contact Shannon Banner at or John Evans at . Register once for both sessions.
Session I – Tuesday January 26, 2021; 1:00PM to 4:30 PM (EDT)
Session II – Thursday January 28, 2021; 1:00 to 4:30 PM (EDT)
The final rule is applicable to both major and area sources and contains the same requirements as the Emission Guidelines and New Source Performance Standards (EG/NSPS), promulgated in 1996. The final rule adds startup, shutdown, and malfunction (SSM) requirements, adds operating condition deviations for out-of-bounds monitoring parameters, requires timely control of bioreactor landfills, and changes the reporting frequency for one type of report.
The hazardous air pollutants (HAP) emitted by municipal solid waste (MSW) landfills include, but are not limited to, vinyl chloride, ethyl benzene, toluene, and benzene. Each of the HAP emitted from MSW landfills can cause adverse health effects provided sufficient exposure.
FREE LIVE WEBINAR & Q/A
Landfills, compost facilities, transfer stations, and renewable energy plants are cognizant of odor issues and strive to minimize odors. Proactive odor management is critical to the continued success and operation of these facilities.
More so than ever before, the solid waste industry faces complex and challenging odor issues based upon public, regulatory, and legal actions. Since odors are generally enforced through nuisance regulations, compliance can be difficult to achieve, not to mention almost impossible to define. Enforcement of odor nuisances is subjective, usually at the discretion of an environmental inspector or Air Pollution Control Officer, and often based upon citizen complaints. When citizen complaints mount, and enforcement action is leveraged, lawsuits often surface as an added ongoing challenge to waste facility operations. Now politicians are demanding action and using alleged odor violations as part of their environmental platforms. Facing odor issues can be costly and threaten the intended land-use designs that waste facilities require to serve their local communities.
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Register for SCS Engineers’ January webinar to learn more about the proactive strategies and practices you can implement at your critical solid waste facilities. This free webinar will help you develop capabilities to assess the potential for odor issues and, by doing so, set realistic benchmarks toward cost-effective and meaningful mitigation measures.
Our panelists bring comprehensive expertise to the table, including facility design and planning, technical experience in air quality compliance and pollutant dispersion and air measurement programs, atmospheric dispersion and transport of airborne pollutants, particularly in the area of complex terrain. They will provide decades of strategies, resources, and best practices and technologies based on successful solutions that help support your facility as you prepare for, and likely will, experience odor complaints.
The team answers questions throughout the presentation, and the second portion of the program is devoted to Q&A and idea exchange.
In implementing the EPA’s federal requirements for Coal Ash Residual – CCR sites, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality’s CCR program needs to be at least as protective as the requirements of the self-implementing federal CCR rules. The TCEQ also is charged with making the Texas CCR program consistent with other TCEQ regulatory programs. As such, the TCEQ incorporated various provisions of state permitting programs and procedures into Chapter 352.
Whereas many of the EPA’s federal requirements are adopted directly by reference to the federal CCR rules (40 Code of Federal Regulations, as amended through April 17, 2015, issue of the Federal Register (80 FR 21301)), other requirements were tailored and, or expanded to be consistent with TCEQ programs. Following are select examples correlating the EPA and TCEQ requirements:
There were also five provisions of the federal CCR regulations that the TCEQ did not include in its permit program. These are addressed in EPA’S announcement regarding the TCEQ’s application requesting partial approval of their CCR state permit program. See https://www.epa.gov/coalash/us-state-texas-coal-combustion-residuals-ccr-permit-program
Register for SCS Engineers’ January webinar to learn more about the proactive strategies and practices you can implement at your critical solid waste facilities. This free webinar will help you develop capabilities to assess the potential for odor issues and, by doing so, set realistic benchmarks toward cost-effective and meaningful mitigation measures.
FREE LIVE WEBINAR & Q/A
Landfills, compost facilities, transfer stations, and renewable energy plants are cognizant of odor issues and strive to minimize odors. Proactive odor management is critical to the continued success and operation of these facilities.
More so than ever before, the solid waste industry faces complex and challenging odor issues based upon public, regulatory, and legal actions. Since odors are generally enforced through nuisance regulations, compliance can be difficult to achieve, not to mention almost impossible to define. Enforcement of odor nuisances is subjective, usually at the discretion of an environmental inspector or Air Pollution Control Officer, and often based upon citizen complaints. When citizen complaints mount, and enforcement action is leveraged, lawsuits often surface as an added ongoing challenge to waste facility operations. Now politicians are demanding action and using alleged odor violations as part of their environmental platforms. Facing odor issues can be costly and threaten the intended land-use designs that waste facilities require to serve their local communities.
SCS Engineers and Florida East Coast Industries (FECI) are to be honored at the annual conference in Florida planned for August 2021. The firms will receive a 2021 Engineering Excellence Award by the American Council of Engineering Companies of Florida. The honor acknowledges SCS for the environmental engineering firm’s innovative design that integrates groundwater remediation with the stormwater management system on a 500-acre former landfill site. The design enabled the developer to remediate the former landfill into the Countyline Corporate Park in Southeast Florida.
Industrial real estate is in high demand, but former landfills and brownfields present environmental challenges that can become cost-prohibitive to redevelop without sound environmental expertise. FECI retained the professional services of SCS Engineers to provide consulting and design services addressing the environmental concerns preventing the transformation of a former landfill into a state of the art business park.
Environmental guidelines require 28% (or about 140 acres) of the site to be set aside for stormwater retention. The set aside would require the relocation of several thousand cubic yards of waste and prevent the 140 acres’ redevelopment. The estimated loss of $300 million in potential real estate sales, coupled with the groundwater remediation expense, made the site redevelopment cost-prohibitive. Unless resolved, the problem also impeded FECI’s corporate sustainability goals.
SCS’s experts in landfill design, closure, and remediation, developed a solution tying together the groundwater remediation and stormwater management systems. The integrated system allows for shallow aquifer recharge with stormwater and captures impacted groundwater at the site’s boundary. “We were able to provide an alternative design acceptable to all the permitting agencies, eliminating the need to set aside large areas for stormwater retention,” said Mr. Som Kundral, P.E., SCS’s senior project manager.
SCS’s remedial actions protect public health while opening the site for reuse. The project will be completed in phases. Phase I, consisting of 160 acres, is complete, with two million square feet of occupied businesses and a 30-acre community park. Development of the other three phases, which include another six million square feet, is underway.
The development will create hundreds of new jobs, deliver several hundred million dollars to the city and county tax base, and provide a 30-acre public park. “The engineering solution protects the environment while meeting FECI’s strategic, social, economic, and sustainability goals,” said Mr. Eduardo Smith, P.E., SCS’s senior vice president of client success.
Learn more about these related topics, events, and case studies at SCS Engineers:
EPA is hosting a free workshop in January on landfill monitoring and emissions. The workshops are scheduled twice, over half-day sessions. These sessions will include presentations highlighting the latest technological developments for monitoring and measuring landfill gas emissions.
Dates and Times: Register once for both sessions.
If you have any questions, please contact Shannon Banner at or John Evans at .
Register for SCS Engineers’ January webinar to learn more about the proactive strategies and practices you can implement at your critical solid waste facilities. This free webinar will help you develop capabilities to assess the potential for odor issues and, by doing so, set realistic benchmarks toward cost-effective and meaningful mitigation measures.
FREE LIVE WEBINAR & Q/A
Landfills, compost facilities, transfer stations, and renewable energy plants are cognizant of odor issues and strive to minimize odors. Proactive odor management is critical to the continued success and operation of these facilities.
More so than ever before, the solid waste industry faces complex and challenging odor issues based upon public, regulatory, and legal actions. Since odors are generally enforced through nuisance regulations, compliance can be difficult to achieve, not to mention almost impossible to define. Enforcement of odor nuisances is subjective, usually at the discretion of an environmental inspector or Air Pollution Control Officer, and often based upon citizen complaints. When citizen complaints mount, and enforcement action is leveraged, lawsuits often surface as an added ongoing challenge to waste facility operations. Now politicians are demanding action and using alleged odor violations as part of their environmental platforms. Facing odor issues can be costly and threaten the intended land-use designs that waste facilities require to serve their local communities.
As large tracts of geographically desirable vacant land become scarcer, residential and commercial property developers are increasingly turning to old landfills or former dumps. However, such redevelopment is complex and rife with uncertainties. When compared to greenfield development, the land acquisition costs are lower. Still, any savings are typically offset by greater environmental and infrastructure costs associated with the foundation, landfill gas management, stormwater management, groundwater impacts, meeting closure requirements, and multiple regulatory agency coordination. Therefore, it is important to maximize the developable area while providing engineering solutions to make the project economically feasible. In this blog, we identify some options to reuse challenging sites and lessons learned to contribute to successful redevelopment projects.
Deep Dynamic Compaction
Old landfills or dumps present some unique soil stability challenges. Deep dynamic compaction (DDC) is a ground stabilization technique that has gained popularity in recent years to improve subsurface soil conditions. DDC involves dropping 6 to 30-ton weights from a height between 30 and 75 feet to achieve the desired soil compaction. DDC can effectively apply to a range of subsurface materials, including former C&D debris or municipal solid waste dumps.
DDC provides a stable foundation for future development, minimizes differential settlement while leaving the landfill waste in place, and eliminates the costs associated with removing, transporting, and disposing of buried waste, costing millions of dollars. For simplicity’s sake, let’s consider a 1-acre old landfill or a dumpsite with an average of 15 feet of waste. If excavating the waste and replacing it with clean fill, the disposal fee costs for the excavated waste alone could exceed $400,000. Alternatively, DDC costs range from $1.50 to $2.00 per square foot or $65,000 to $87,120 per acre, excluding mobilization, which costs around $30,000.
Gas Mitigation Systems
Constructing buildings on top of dynamically compacted areas generally requires a combustible gas barrier layer below the building foundation to manage subsurface combustible gases (typically methane). The barrier is required because the waste remains in place. In its simplified form, gas mitigation systems include:
These gas mitigation systems can be either a passive or an active system with a blower. The cost of such systems varies depending on the size of the building, location, and type of liner system used. Typical capital costs for passive systems are in the range of $7 to $9 per square foot for the spray-applied liner and $3 to $4 per square foot for the HDPE liner. For an active system using blowers, add $3 to $4 per square foot. The designer configures a system from these options to address the client’s risk preference and considering future tenant preferences.
Using innovative approaches, impaired lands are increasingly attractive to developers. Beyond the cost-saving benefits to developers realized through DDC and an appropriate gas mitigation system, such projects also create local jobs, increase the tax base, and protect public health and the environment.
About the Authors:
Somshekhar Kundral – Mr. Kundralis, PE, is a Senior Project Manager with over 12 years of broad and diverse environmental engineering experience that includes projects in landfill redevelopment, landfill gas management system design, site assessment, groundwater remediation system design, stormwater management, and injection well system construction. Som is experienced with site permitting, compliance reporting and construction administration services, and remediation systems’ operation and management.
Manuel J. Hernandez – Mr. Hernandez, PE, BCEE, is a Project Director with 21 years of experience in the environmental field. Manny focuses on solid waste management, and he is an expert in local and federal environmental regulations. His experience includes comprehensive project development, including planning, evaluation, contract negotiations, permitting, design, construction administration, and public outreach. He is known for his leadership, mentoring and team-building skills within multicultural teams.
Both engineer’s environmental works include public and private clients. SCS Engineers is a member of the U.S. Green Building Council and the Center for Creative Land Recycling.
